This page, like the next several, would prove impossible to read. Though there would be numerous words she could make out along the way, or dates that hadn't been eroded by the years of humidity, it was impossible for her to make out anything of meaning in the passages. The earliest legible date in the journal was from 1973. Before Kim had even been born. It was strange to think that this journal had been started before her own parents had met. She took to flipping through it more quickly, seeking out a paragraph, a sentence she could make sense of.
She came upon such a passage about a third of the way into the journal. It was a nearly complete entry, dated from the second half of 1973, and it began with “Marshall simply doesn't understand.” Kim read it out in a hushed tone, flinching somewhat as though it were an incantation meant to draw up some monstrosity from the pit. These words, in their way, carried a kind of power for her. These thoughts, written down so many decades previous, embodied the mind of this woman, who'd gone missing mysteriously nearly eight years ago. To read her words aloud almost gave Dakota a new lease on life.
“Marshall doesn't understand why I'm upset all the time, why the happiness is gone from my smiles and why I idle around the house. Of course, he wouldn't. He's a man, and he finds his meaning and entertainment elsewhere. But for me, well, I rather prefer at this age to settle into a matronly role. We aren't young twenty-somethings any longer. We're into our thirties now, and the years of domesticity are upon us. What I want most, and what God seems least interested in giving me, is a baby.
“I've kept a close eye on my diet, have had fresh air and sun in abundance. Still, our efforts to conceive have come to nothing. And I fear it may stay that way. We've tried everything, even some obscure herbal treatments, but nothing has worked for us. A friend said recently that maybe Marshall and I aren't intended to have children. Perhaps that is so. And for that matter, my husband is content to remain childless and carefree. But I tell you I will never be happy in this life without a child to call my own. It is my calling in life to be a mother. I am sure of it. God need only send me a child...”
She wet her lips. This explained the baby furniture in the basement, she thought. The poor woman had wanted a child so badly, had prepared for one, but had ended up moving all of the stuff into the basement when she realized she'd never be able to use it. The hidden room in the cellar lost a touch of its eeriness and gained a melancholic air in Kim's thoughts. It was a room hidden away, a room full of lost chances, representing things that could have been but ultimately never materialized. No wonder it'd been wallpapered over; Dakota probably hadn't wanted the reminder.
Kim cleared her throat, giving a little frown as she finished reading the passage in a hushed tone. Reading this private journal and acquainting herself with a stranger's pain seemed suddenly in very poor taste. She flipped through the next several pages and found them mostly a water-damaged mess. She was almost thankful for that. When she did come upon something readable, her eyes locked onto it before she even knew what she was doing, however. She couldn't help it. Curiosity was getting the better of her.
More often than not, the surviving script included the word baby, or highlighted her yearning for a child. If the few readable blurbs were to be believed, it was a topic that Dakota wrote about often. When Kim got more than half-way through the book and had only found a few more lines worth of legible writing, she began to hope that the rest of the journal would be similarly effaced. It was better that way, for the elements to have ruined the journal and covered up her suffering, wasn't it?
A few pages later, there was another passage, this one partially smudged, but more or less readable. Kim didn't dare read it aloud, somewhat unnerved by the sudden change in penmanship. It was still Dakota's hand, but the words on the page were imbued with more ferocity for the way they'd been pressed in, hard. The strokes were bolder, wilder, and the writing less polished. In this entry, Dakota talked once more about her failure to conceive, and she had grown angry since the last entry. The tone, the word choices, were grave, erratic. I want a baby. I want a baby. Please, God, if you love me at all, send me a baby. And if you don't, then just kill me.
A few passages had been scratched out with intensity on subsequent pages, their rough lines blurred and running down the page. Why can't I have a goddamn baby like other women? I've prayed, and prayed, but I never get one. Why not? WHY NOT? What's the matter with me? Is my womb rotten? Am I unclean? Then, a few pages later, and flanked by passages that'd been aggressively struck out: If I don't have a baby I don't know what I'll do. I don't care how, I simply must have a baby. I'd give anything. I must be a mother. I must have a baby. I must have a baby. A baby... a baby... a baby... a baby... a baby...
The next several pages, though mostly water damaged and blurred, were easy enough to make out.
It was merely the word “baby” written over and over again in a progressively unsteadier hand.
Kim was breathing hard. She had a front seat view to Dakota's unraveling, and what she was seeing disturbed her. Edwin had earlier alluded to the fact that Dakota had wanted children. Still, Kim had never expected anything like this. The woman was obsessed, her writings bordering on insane. She'd fixated on becoming a mother, had focused all of her hope on becoming pregnant. When this didn't happen, what did Dakota do? Kim already knew how the story ended; the Reeds had never managed to have children. Did this factor into their disappearance somehow? Did Dakota become unhinged over the years and do something to her husband? Did their lack of children disappoint them so much that they left one another, fleeing in shame? Or, perhaps, had they turned to suicide? She shook her head. Her imagination was running away from her. Still, the writings were disturbing.
Turning another blurred page, Kim was suddenly startled.
Sandwiched between two pages, its edges marred somewhat by smudges of ink, she happened upon a photograph.
Before she even knew what she was looking at apprehension gripped her and she nearly went to close the book. Her thoughts drifted back to the other photos they'd found in the house; the photo of the smiling couple in the wall upstairs, the photo of the masked individuals in the attic. Happening upon photos in this house never seemed to end well for her, and she wasn't keen on frightening herself unnecessarily. Curiosity won out however, and taking in a sharp breath, she picked up the photograph and studied it.
Kim recognized the background of the photo at once. Tall, ashen trunks devoid of leaves. The woods behind the house. In the foreground, leaning against one of the trunks, was a woman with long, brown hair. Squinting at the image, Kim tried to make out her features. As best she could remember it, this was the same woman from the first photograph they'd found up in the bathroom wall during renovations. This, she assumed, was Dakota.
“No,” she muttered to herself, perplexed. “It can't be.”
The woman in the photograph, presumably Dakota, was holding something in her arms. A white bundle of flowing blankets.
From the bundle, came a small, lively arm.
A baby.
This was seemingly a photograph of Dakota holding a baby in the woods outside their house.
Kim stared at it a long while as though she expected the photo to change, or for it to offer some explanation. When none came she set it down and massaged at her eyelids, tugging on her black ponytail to ensure she was actually awake. “What the hell?” she asked herself. “How can this be? They didn't have any kids, so... why's she holding this baby?” Something about this photo didn't sit well with her. Her stomach opened up into a void, filled to teeming with dread in the next instant. Dakota was smiling in the photo, widely. She looked triumphant, relieved.
But most of all, she looked wicked.
In the photo, her thin white arms grasped at the bundled child and her eyes were wide. Though on first glance the picture had seemed relatively innocuous, Kim wondered if her reading of the journal hadn't colored her opinions. Here and there, if she looked hard enough, she could find in Dakota's visage, i
n her posture, subtle hints of that same rage and fixation she'd espied in the journal's rambles.
On the reverse of the photo, something had been written in black ball-point, but it'd become too smudged to read. Kim studied it, tried to suss out some meaning from the dark jumble, but came away empty-handed.
Her stomach groaned and she literally grew ill at the prospect of turning the page.
Thankfully, she heard Julian calling out to her from the back door. “Hey, babe, can you come help me with this mower? I've read the directions like a hundred times, but I must be overlooking something. Another set of eyes would be great.”
Relieved, she stuck the photo back into the journal where she'd found it and closed the book. Standing up and trying to banish the shakiness from her legs, Kim slid it across the kitchen counter and tried to put the questions from her mind. Maybe they really did have a kid, she thought to herself. But that can't be right. Edwin was a close friend and he didn't know about it. Despite her best intentions, the wheels kept turning in her head. Maybe it was someone else's kid, perhaps Edwin's. Yeah, that's gotta be it.
Kim gulped, turning back to the journal on the counter as she slipped on her shoes and prepared to head out back. It sat so heavily on the countertop despite its light weight. The stiff cover beckoned her, the pages within offering of a potential explanation for the photo.
That would have to wait. Julian needed her help now. And besides, she thought as she ambled into the back yard, you've got enough to think about already.
Fourteen
Julian was half a day in completing the yard work. He took several breaks, did plenty of complaining, and when he was finally through with the yard around dinner, he declined to clean up the clippings and instead shuffled into the shower. When he was through, Kim prepared a simple dinner of steamed chicken breast, broccoli and rice, and the pair watched a DVD.
Tired out, Julian fell asleep on the sofa before the opening credits even finished.
Half-way through the film, Kim was feeling restless. Everything she'd done that day had been carried out in a distracted daze. She thought constantly of the photograph in the journal, of Dakota's intense ramblings, of the hidden door, now open, just beyond the foot of the cellar stairs.
She couldn't enjoy her dinner or the film and shut it off, throwing a blanket over Julian and pacing about the kitchen so as not to disturb him. She felt apprehensive as she glanced at the journal, undisturbed since she'd last set it down, and considered starting into it again. Just the sight of the cover, of the old photograph sticking out of it like a bookmark, was enough to make her heart take off on a sprint.
No, she wasn't ready for that.
There was housework to be done, and though the sun had set, she found herself with too much energy. Some of it needed burnt off. She carried a smattering of small boxes up from the downstairs and set them outside one of the bedrooms, which they intended to turn into Julian's study. He'd picked the room on his own, one of the four empty bedrooms, and thought it might make for a good office space because it lacked a window. “Less distractions that way,” he'd said.
To her, it just seemed like a dreary closet. Kim pushed open the door and carried the boxes in one by one. They weren't terribly heavy, stuffed mostly with office supplies and old documents. She wouldn't mess with his paperwork, but would set his curios out on the large writing desk that the movers had hoisted upstairs. Julian would rearrange everything no matter how she laid it out, but she didn't much care in the moment. She was just searching for some kind of distraction from thoughts of the journal.
Julian always needed to do his writing in a room of his own. Back in their little apartment, he'd sometimes shut himself up in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with his laptop propped up on his knees. That was all the privacy they could afford back then, and in retrospect it seemed ridiculously silly that he went to such lengths. Unlike other creative types she knew however, Julian had always been fiercely private while doing his work. He insisted upon having a door to lock, on tuning out all distractions, and not emerging until he was pleased with his work for the day. The time would come, probably sooner than later, when the itch to write would return to him. With the sale of his screenplay, he'd discussed the possibility of starting into a novel. It was a dream of his, something he'd always wanted to do but had put off in favor of more lucrative work. She wasn't looking forward to the day he decided to start that. He'd be quiet, withdrawn again. Their interactions would be more distant and his thoughts would always be involved in a tug-of-war with the book. But she was happy he'd have a proper office to do the work in, anyhow. When he didn't get his writing in for the day, or something interrupted one of his projects, he was always in a foul mood. Better for him to have a comfortable room he could seal himself away in, she thought.
Scanning the room, she took in the four, plain walls and tried to visualize it coming together as a study. Before too long he'd have it cluttered with books and papers and who-knows-what-else. That was his way; he wasn't orderly where his work was concerned and was prone to leaving messes in his workspace. She recalled with a chuckle the way he'd sometimes leave notepads or typed pages on the bathroom sink, or taped to the walls around the toilet back at their old apartment.
Her laugh proved discordant, bouncing off of the walls and coming back to her with an unpleasant sharpness. Standing in the doorway, she appraised the office chair, sitting vacant before the desk. A few boxes of yet-unpacked office supplies sat beside the closet.
She frowned as she took in the closet. It was covered in a sliding door, its wooden surface carved by the previous owners. A large, tacky leaf motif adorned the front. Probably Marshall's work, like the bannister. She walked up to it, ran a finger through the grooves that comprised the wide, wavy leaf design and sighed. Julian would probably be willing to overlook it, be she couldn't. It would have to go.
As she took to unpacking the first of several boxes, she reflected on something that Edwin had said with emphasis. More than once he'd mentioned that the Reeds considered the house their legacy, that they'd worked on it and were very proud of it. She understood the concept of taking pride in one's home, however what Kim couldn't understand was why the house had been littered in clumsy carved flourishes when the carver obviously didn't have any talent for it. The bannister, the crummy spirals that adorned the edges of the cabinets in places, the leaf on the front of this closet door; none of them looked especially good.
Neither, for that matter, did the half-finished mural in the basement's hidden chamber.
She tried to stop her thoughts from progressing any further, gulping as she recalled the mural. Who had painted it there, and why? The presence of such a thing in a room so dark and damp as that made her uneasy. Very uneasy. The more she reflected on the mural, on the weathered baby furniture that littered the hidden room, the more she thought about the photograph in the journal, of Dakota holding a baby in the woods. Certainly the two weren't related. Or were they? No, Dakota wanted a baby more than anything. If that baby in the picture really was hers, and it almost certainly wasn't, then she wouldn't have made its nursery in a room like that one. Not with so many rooms upstairs.
She paused in her unpacking, setting a metal container of paperclips on the desk and sighing. “How in the hell did we end up in this house?” she mumbled, shaking her head. They'd gone from relative normalcy in the city, living in a cramped apartment, to buying up some massive house out in the middle of nowhere with a seedy and seemingly sinister past. She felt like she was a character in a suspenseful TV show, constantly on the verge of some new and terrifying revelation. It was beginning to grow tiresome. Where initially she'd been spurred on by curiosity about the former owners, she was becoming more and more hesitant to add to her knowledge about them. Every stone she turned threatened to reveal things better left hidden, the door in the cellar being a prime example. Kim could have lived a full and happy life without ever knowing about the things kept inside that dark chamber, or the mur
al, or the contents of the journal she'd found therein.
Not that it would stop her from trying to learn more. She was in deep now and she knew it. Too deep to turn back. Morbid curiosity would get the better of her, or otherwise she'd be compelled to keep reading the journal by stark fear. It was just the kind of person she was. Julian could throw his hands up and ignore all of the strange things going on in the house without a second thought, but not her. She cared too much.
A small noise from behind knocked her out of her thoughts. She was standing with her back to the closet, and turned to find the leaf-paneled door rattling somewhat. There seemed to come a soft knock from its other side.
Kim stiffened, watching the closet door closely.
The knock came a second time, even more gently than the first, if it was possible. It was the sound of knuckles grazing at the inside of the door, of fingers pawing the interior surface weakly. Her face went white and she staggered back a few paces. Was there something in the closet? What would Julian say in a case like this? Maybe... maybe a tremor is making it shake? A draft? She grit her teeth and watched as the sound came through a third time. The door swung very slightly, almost imperceptibly on its track. That something was inside the closet, actively agitating the hefty wooden panel, was plain as day. Something of substance was pushing up against the door from the inside, as if trying to feebly break out. She was certain of it.
Shaking with every step, Kim approached the closet. She placed her palm against the leaf motif and, tensing in anticipation, thrust the door open. It slid over on the track, smacking into the wall, and she jumped away with a little whimper, heart thrashing and brow now teeming with sweat for what she might see.
Black Acres- The Complete Collection Page 9